Oh, and by “jewz”, do you mean like the religious Jew David Klinghoffer who is part of the DI? And David Berlinski, the secular Jew whose work they have published? They want to put those Jews in their place? I think you understand very little of intra-ID cultural dynamics.
Well, smug, latte-drinking elitists and academics are despicable, so I can understand how people who have to work for a living despise them. To be sure, not all academics are like that, and not all university-educated people are like that. But as has been demonstrated multiple times by responsible survey work, the faculty composition inside the academy is extremely out of whack with the moral, social, and cultural values of the general population, tilting far to the left not only of conservative Americans but even of moderate Americans.
Admittedly, voting for Donald Trump is a lousy response to that, but what option do such people have? I personally dislike Trump as much as the next man, and wish the Republican Party were healthier than it is, but given a choice between Trump and Biden, what is a truck driver or unemployed factory worker going to choose? The American intellectual elites have behaved with extreme irresponsibility, and they are paying the political price. As I said before, the creation of a third party, a moderate party, between the extreme right to which the Republicans have shifted and the extreme left to which the Democrats have shifted, should be a top priority for civically minded Americans. If such a third option existed, Trump would not have a chance of getting re-elected, and all the lefties here could breathe more easily.
What have I got to do with it? Facts are facts, and the position they leave me in is irrelevant.
I don’t have to explain any such thing. You have to explain: (a) how life arose without design – and no vague story-telling allowed – a stepwise description is required, with names of actual molecules involved, and so on; (b) why you are so eager to convince people that life required no design.
No, I see no such thing. What you call “the current RNA world” (a label you’ve adopted for your own polemical purposes) I call “the current DNA-RNA-protein world”, and I think that world taken overall provides very strong evidence for design.
You spoke of “crackpots” in the plural, and I mentioned three people, so most readers would take your reference to apply to all three. But let’s say you just wrote unclearly; are you now saying that you intend to read Kojonen and Ratzsch?
Actually, I’m the only one reading the quoted texts in their plain and unforced meaning. Mercer is putting all kinds of constructions on the sentences which they don’t bear.
Yes, DI would see that they were put in their place if they ever got the world they want.
Have you managed to read Animal Farm yet?
Yes. Because I was making a general statement of principle: That reviews of crackpots by fellow crackpots are not worthy of serious attention.
Now, since you are always bragging about your writing skills, explain why you think that idea would be best communicated if I, instead, used the singular form of “crackpot” rather than the plural.
And you think that Klinghoffer and Berlinski are so blissfully stupid that they can’t see this alleged plot? Funny, I’ve corresponded with both men, and they are highly intelligent individuals who are far from politically naive. Of course, you know neither of them; nor do you know personally any of the DI people you are convinced are in on the plot. But why do you need knowledge, when paranoia is enough to provide your opinions?
Oh, and what about Ann Gauger? Is she one of the “wammins” who will be put in her place once the alleged plot succeeds? Is she also deluded in thinking that the other DI members regard her as a colleague and equal?
As if you’re qualified to judge, with your (by your own admission) one undergrad biology course, and not having read the passage in the Encyclopedia of Evolution that I pointed out. Or if you have read it, tell me what it says, and how you interpret it? I could use a good laugh, given how good psychiatrists are at “interpreting” everything from dreams to behaviors.
But my credentials are of little matter when we are talking about a disagreement between scientific professionals and someone who, up until a couple years ago, didn’t even use Medline/Pubmed because he thought it charged a fee.
Given that both Berlinski and Klinghoffer almost certainly lost a large number of family members in the Holocaust, during which a historically and nominally Christian nation mass-murdered Jews, it’s extremely unlikely that they have not developed very finely tuned senses regarding the possible repression of Jews by a Christian majority. Your paranoia is showing.
You’d think, wouldn’t you? But since they are so clueless about everything they choose to write about, why should we assume they would be any more astute in other areas?
And, of course, they might actually believe the ID claptrap about Darwin causing Hitler.
By saying, “they are” rather than “I’ve heard they are”, you’re implying that you’ve read “everything they choose to write about”, which necessarily includes their books, so tell me which of their books you have read and how those books indicate that they are “clueless”.
ID, being a theory of design detection, has no view about the causes of Hitler. Are you (yet again) confusing ID with the political or social views of some of its proponents?
And of course, since the meaning of the word “cause” in history is much more nuanced and multifaceted than the meaning of the word “cause” in science, there can be senses in which A can be said to be a cause of B, or a contributing cause of B, which (provided they include all the proper caveats) are legitimate. I know of no one who says “Darwin caused Hitler” in any crude or unqualified sense. But several scholarly works (none of which, I’m guessing, you have read) have argued that Darwin, or at least some of Darwin’s ideas, were among the ideas in the mix that produced Hitler. Those of us with academic training in history are always open to such nuanced accounts of historical causality.
Perhaps because I’ve had so many Jewish professors, have had Shabbat dinner in a Jewish home, have been a guest at a bar mitzvah, have attended a very moving Jewish funeral service, have interacted for decades with so many Jewish scholars from around the world, and have studied in a department where awareness of the Holocaust was strong, I find your estimation of the social/cultural perception of the Jewish ID thinkers I mentioned to be somewhat offensive, or at least highly culturally insensitive. I would have thought that living in Toronto, with its talented and vibrant Jewish community, and working at a university which boasts many Jewish faculty members, would have made such insensitivity impossible.
Eddie, I completed a basic search and in less 2 minutes found evidence that yes the term has expanded.
First hit in google scholar:
“An evolutionary scenario based on the fusion of the replicative modules of protoviroids, likely generated in the RNA world, with RNAs of cellular origin could explain the origin not only of viroids but also of the other viroid-like catalytic RNAs present in plants and animals, thus providing a parsimonious and unified model for their emergence and evolution in the cellular environment”
2nd hit in pubmed:
“Although we live in the remnants of an RNA world, the world of drug discovery and chemical probes is firmly protein-centric”
Even to a lay reader, the idea that the RNA world does persist and if you go deeper, you can see the importance of RNA. Of course, protein is an important component of life, yet this idea of persisting and evolution RNA world is common-place. Words often change meaning and develop over time which you already know.
Talking about responsibility and handling the word of truth with care, why did you decide to omit where God clearly discusses many natural phemonena from being responsible to everthing from the water cycle and weather (Jeremiah 10:13) to planetary motion and more (Matthew 5:45)? God has directly intervened in many events according to our shared history of faith, yet which part of the water cycle is not due to natural laws?
Interesting thought to bring up this blanket accusation especially as a Christian and then think that your second sentence rescues the first. This same preference of values and prejudice has been repeatedly stoked by the political actors within this sphere such as DI (simply read their policy and discussion articles on education to see which part of the culture war they are on, and they are promoting) to try and erode trust in even those evil and despicable elites.
Additionally, on many things, Democrats and Republicans are both rightwing. Biden blocked railway workers getting 7 days of paid sick time. Given inflation, sick time is increasingly dangerous.
While Biden is a neo-conservative, it could very well be more important for each of those individuals to want a move towards progressivism even if tiny. Truck drivers have insane hours and make less now than they did 1980s when adjusted for inflation. The lack of a safety net and effective training programs would be more important than a temporary factory relocation (where Trump’s policies are not the only global factor) to the US.
Instead, those working-class people were fed diets of the following:
Fox news for their information, Focus on the Family for their counselling, and CMI/DI/ICR/etc for their learning about both sides’ science. Not to mention the many other facets of political cultural interactions.
Rather than building affordable cities, robust education, more efficient healthcare (or even government), or demonstrated effective policies, they constantly maintain control via hate, rugged individualism and bootstrapping, and promoting those values you discussed beforehand when convenient.
I don’t deny that the meaning of a term can expand. But I was discussing the subject of the origin of life, and when that is the topic “RNA world” refers to what is described in the Encyclopedia of Evolution article I cited. If Cech or anyone else wants to say we live in an “RNA world” and makes clear from the context that he or she is speaking about RNA as it functions in the DNA-RNA-protein context of current life, readers can adjust to that, and so can I, but it does not negate the original meaning of “RNA world” as a hypothesis about the origin of life.
The danger of using the term ambiguously was made plain to me in a discussion I had a while back with John Harshman, who, in trying to “correct” me for something I said about the RNA world hypothesis for the origin of life, sternly lectured me about the relationship between DNA, RNA, and proteins, as if I did not know it. But I did know it; what confused me was not lack of knowledge of DNA-RNA-protein relations, but the fact that he was assuming those relations during the period I knew as the “RNA world”. I was completely thrown by his remarks, as in the hypothetical RNA world, DNA and proteins are not yet in the picture. When I pointed this out, he said something to the effect of, “Well, maybe much earlier in the process [it was RNA alone as you describe]…” and then I realized that he was using “RNA world” to cover not only the origin of life but also much of its later development – without telling me that he had made the shift.
A useful conversational convention would be this: When the explicit subject of conversation is the origin of life (not its later developments), use the phrase “RNA world” to refer only to that period of time in which (hypothetically) RNA was the replicator and the catalyst.
Meyer’s first book is explicitly about the origin of life, not about its later developments. When he discusses the RNA world, and argues that RNA’s capacities are inadequate to account for the origin of life, he has in mind the definition of “RNA world” that can be found on the Encyclopedia of Evolution page I cited. Meyer does make an error (which I admitted as soon as I realized it was an error) in calling peptidyl transferase an “enzyme” instead of a “ribozyme”, but that error hardly affects his argument. Whether you call it an “enzyme” or a “ribozyme”, Meyer’s argument is that in the original situation hypothesized in the RNA world (no DNA-RNA-protein setup, no ribosomes, no cell walls yet, etc.), RNA doesn’t have what it takes to account for the origin of life. He might be wrong about that, but if he’s wrong, the error would lie in his underestimation of what naked RNA can do, not in his mislabeling a ribozyme as an enzyme. Mercer’s 10±year-long harping on Meyer’s terminological error doesn’t get to the heart of Meyer’s argument.
To kill Meyer’s argument dead, one would have to show that naked RNA segments (not segments assisted by our modern cellular context) have a vast range of self-replicating and catalytic powers, enough to account for the eventual generation of DNA and proteins and the eventual formation of the present DNA-RNA-protein system. And Mercer certainly has not shown this. All he has shown is that Meyer made a terminological blunder. I’d be the first to agree that the blunder should never have been allowed into the book – the scientific proofreaders of the typescript should have caught that before the typescript ever got to the final copyeditor. But to howl great war-whoops over this blunder for 10+ years, instead of meeting the challenge of Meyer by showing how naked RNA could have built up the DNA-RNA-protein world we know, indicates a greater desire to score a culture-war victory over an ID proponent than to elucidate for general readers the processes that led to the origin of life.
Much could be said about this, but note a few things. The words “nature” and “natural” have no true equivalents in the Hebrew Bible (or in the Gospels, for that matter). They are loaded up with Greek philosophical ideas which are alien to the Hebraic context. Second, even if we use language loosely to say that in the Hebrew Bible God created “nature” or “natural causes” or “natural laws”, and that many or most events in the day-to-day operation of the world are understood by the Biblical writers as proceeding from “natural causes”, it does not follow that the creation of the original situation of the world was due only to natural causes. Indeed, the most “natural” (there’s that loaded word again!) reading of Genesis and other creation passages suggests that the Hebrew writers did not believe that, but thought of at least the original creation and layout of the world as the result of “mighty acts of God” that could not be explained by “natural causes” but only by the efficacy of his creative Word and the divine Power behind it.
Regarding your remarks about Republicans and Democrats, I think that discussing these things further here would derail the discussion, and that a new topic should be devoted to the issue raised by Rumraket. But certainly it is not only the institutions that you mention that have “fed” people with questionable ideas. Fauci, Francis Collins, Al Gore, and many others over the past decades have done some “feeding” of their own, feeding which in many cases can hardly be considered entirely neutral, non-partisan, or non-politicized. The difference, of course, is that Fauci, Gore, etc. were able to get their ideas directly adopted by people in positions of political and administrative power, bypassing public debate. (E.g., there was no public debate on any legacy TV network or in any mainstream American newspaper [e.g., the NY Times] or at any university campus between Fauci/Collins and the unquestionably academically well-trained epidemiologists from three of the world’s great universities – Stanford, Harvard and Oxford – over the use of general lockdowns [as opposed to more targeted restrictions] in response to COVID.) And no, I’m not going to – on this thread – enter into debate regarding COVID lockdowns; I’m merely pointing out that the “legacy media” have certainly fed the public with “official” and greatly oversimplified narratives regarding COVID, climate change, Russia-Ukraine, and many other things. I fully realize that all of the atheists here and maybe even most of the Christians would agree with those oversimplified narratives, and would support the marginalizing or even silencing of alternative viewpoints coming from highly qualified experts, but the fact remains that on many issues over the past couple of decades, vigorous public debate has been bypassed or greatly truncated as administrations and international bodies have pushed ahead aggressively with their various agendas. The idea that the latte-drinking laptop class is always objective, fair, and neutral, and that the sources you deplore are always biased, unreasonable, and wrong is not an idea that a thoughtful person can take seriously.
I think everyone is lying or misrepresenting to a certain extent, usually by the use of greatly oversimplifying half-truths, and that’s why I continually call here (usually with a response of sneers) for ongoing open debate on all questions. And of course, my many previous remarks on the gross political imbalance among university faculty (which has had a lot to do with the one-sided advice that governments receive from university-trained “experts”) are relevant here. But let’s discuss this idea of “systemic bias” in news media etc. elsewhere.
I’m certainly in favor of all these things, but of course anyone who thinks that the majority of energy currently supplied by fossil fuels can be met entirely by wind, solar, and tidal power is not advocating a “demonstrated effective policy” to fill the energy needs of modern technological economies. Regarding “robust education” I’ve made many suggestions for achieving that, including getting the touchy-feely psychologists, sociologists, radical feminists, and other special interest groups out of the way along with their virtue-signaling “Woke” curriculum, and bringing back the study of core subjects, including grammar, reading comprehension, spelling, punctuation, geography, history (including not just parochial national history but also European and world history), languages (hopefully with a restored place for Latin) and of course math and science – and making this robust education accessible to all by scrapping the current system of public educational taxes (which in the USA allows for shameful differences between rich and poor school districts that would never be allowed to exist in Canada, Australia, Europe, etc.) But again, all of this requires a separate topic.
Finally, thanks for responding to me in a conversational rather than a sneering or sarcastic tone. It’s rare that I get responses like that around here. This place would be much more constructive if certain others here wrote their posts like yours to which I am responding. In that fantasy world (even less likely than the RNA world, I fear), my own responses would be similar in character.
My estimation of Klinghoffer and Berlinski is based entirely on their words and actions, and is not influenced in any way by the fact that they are Jewisn. If you disagree, kindly point out anything that I have written that would suggest otherwise.
My opinion, also, is in agreement with that of the large majority of scholars and other thoughtful and informed people
I have doubts that this discussion, whatever it may have been, was as you describe here. I’m presuming you didn’t link to it purely because you can’t find it. Correct?
There is no pedantry involved here. You said that Berlinski and Klinghoffer were “clueless about everything they choose to write about”, but you could not possibly know that unless you had read “everything they choose to write about”. So I repeat my question: Which books of theirs have you read? Or, if you have not read any of their books, simply admit that you were bluffing (again).
But you admitted that you knew they were Jews. And you have said, in essence, that they are too stupid to see the danger of an officially Christian society (which you think the DI is trying to bring about) for Jews. Given the experience of the Holocaust, which impressed upon all the Jews of the world the potential danger for Jews (as if that were not already obvious from previous European history) of officially Christian societies or states, you are in effect saying that they are too stupid to have learned the lesson of the Holocaust. And that’s an offensive thing to say or imply about any Jew. I’m not saying you were deliberately trying to offend Jews in your remarks; I’m just pointing out how insensitive your remark could seem not only to Klinghoffer or Berlinski but to many other Jews. You claimed to be writing in the interest of Jews "or “jewz” as you put it in your remark, yet your follow-up answers to my questions indicate a lack of grasp of Jewish thought and feeling.
You have data to show that you know what “the large majority of scholars and other thoughtful and informed people think”? There are tens of millions of scholars in the world. How many of them have you asked? There are hundreds of millions of informed people in the world. How many of them have you asked? Or is there some book or website where one can look up “What the large majority of scholars and other thoughtful people think about Berlinski and Klinghoffer”? Has someone does a proper study of this? Or are you, as usual, just making stuff up?
No evidence for the integrity of the Discovery Institute
Lots of evidence against the integrity of the Discovery Institute
Lots of rationalizations from DI supporters about why the dishonesty isn’t really that bad
If the DI is actually honest, then why haven’t we seen any positive evidence for this, in over 200 posts on a thread which is ostensibly about the integrity of the DI? I’m not saying that the DI is necessarily dishonest; I don’t really care one way or the other. But from the perspective of a (hopefully unbiased) bystander, it really doesn’t look like any evidence has been provided for their integrity.
@Eddie, can you explain why you think the DI is an accurate and honest source of information?
Correct. But I’m sure all the experts here, who claim to be able to find anything I can’t find within less than two minutes, can quickly look it up. It wasn’t all that long ago – probably within the last 12 months.
OK, I momentarily misremembered parts of the discussion. Just to get things back on track: Please give us the specific statements of Meyer from Signature in the Cell that misuse any or all of the following terms: “peptidyl transferase”; “ribozyme”; “enzyme”; “protein”; and provide the page numbers on which the errors can be found.
I did not say that the DI is always an accurate source of information. The DI is an advocacy organization, and the claims of all advocacy organizations should always be subject to critical scrutiny.
That includes the NCSE, BioLogos, The New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, etc. I have objected only to false or unsubstantiated claims of error or dishonesty.
I’ve said here many times that I rarely read Evolution News columns, and don’t endorse all the statements that are found in them. Nor do I necessarily agree with all social/political stands taken in the past by Discovery. But it’s a bit rich for some people here to be talking about the lack of “integrity” of the DI when many of them have shown they are completely lacking in academic integrity, because they routinely offer opinions about the contents of books they have not read and authors with whose work they are not familiar.
I don’t believe you; it’s the very foundation of Meyer’s mendacity. But maybe you just have a powerful defense mechanism for forgetting how embarrassed you should be.
You can’t possibly have an informed opinion if you don’t understand the most fundamental terms. Also, you’re not really discussing anything from that level. You’re just scanning for words to cite and writing so many in your attacks that you’re hoping that no one notices your ignorance of the basics.
No, I don’t spoonfeed people who despise me, and you’ve never been on track in this matter. You simply don’t have the first clue about the science here. Take a break before you melt down yet again.
If you want to know more, I’ve bolded evidence omitted by Meyer above.
That’s certainly not my recollection at all. What seems to happen again and again is that when the dishonesty of DI authors is shown in the plainest terms, you disclaim having any knowledge of whether they’re right or wrong, much less whether their wrongness is dishonesty. And you assume their works must have some sort of merit even if you haven’t read them. You defended Wells and Dembski’s The Design of Life even after being shown the passage on the homology of the middle ear ossicles in mammals with jaw bones of reptiles being attributed to a mere “bone count.”
And it seems to be a recurring point with you: NEVER defend the substance. Always, when put to it, you back away from defending the substance, disclaim any understanding at all of whether someone is right or wrong, and effectively, by doing so, disqualify yourself from having any sort of understanding which would make you competent to claim that they are merely honestly mistaken as opposed to being dishonest.
And here you are defending “Mammals didn’t exist until the Eocene” Meyer. Seriously: is there no bottom here at all? Haven’t you been shown vastly more than enough to realize that Meyer is only in the business of fooling rubes, and not in the business of promoting any legitimate viewpoint at all? Don’t you ever feel like turning your wrath upon the people who have taken advantage of your ignorance, rather than upon @Mercer ?
